The invention relates to voice-activation technology, and particularly to means for controlling the timing of a responsive action by voice commands.
Most emerging voice-activated applications rely on advanced speech-analysis software for freeform speech interpretation. These applications offer the advantage of convenience, allowing the user to obtain a response without using a keyboard or buttons, but always with an unpredictable delay. Many applications in science and technology, however, involve a transient event that demands a fast and well-timed voice-command response. Such applications are served poorly by the prior art in voice activation, due to the delays and unpredictability of freeform language interpretation, and other delays inherent in prior art technology. The elaborate software that processes freeform speech usually includes probabilistic models, and usually involves multiple computers communicating through wireless links, and usually attempts to interpret an infinite variety of possible commands. The result is an expensive setup, an unpredictable outcome, and a reaction that arrives well after the transient event has passed. By contrast, most serious timing applications in science and technology involve at most a few specific operations, but they must be extremely well-timed. For such applications, freeform speech interpretation is neither required nor helpful.
Prior art also includes a variety of simple sound-activated devices including clap-triggered light switches that respond to an impulse sound, and low-cost kits that convert almost any sound to a switch signal. While some of these sound-activated devices provide a fairly quick responsive action, none of them is suitable for electronics testing applications due to lack of command selectivity, lack of means for interpreting commands, and lack of means for determining when a command starts and ends, and lack of user control over the triggering process.
Applications requiring a fast but command-specific response are abundant in research and industry. Electronics workers, particularly test and measurement workers, often need to trigger an oscilloscope or other analyzer at a particular moment to capture a transient signal. Laboratory workers often need to record or measure something at a precise time. Machinists often need to stop a cut at a particular time. Assemblers and other industrial workers often need to coordinate one action with another action requiring carefully controlled timing. In each of these situations, an operator needs a responsive action instantly at a moment of the operator's own choosing, and a delayed or unpredictable response is worse than useless.
What is needed is a method to produce a very prompt voice-controlled responsive action with minimal time uncertainty, but only when specifically commanded by the operator. Preferably the new method would include means for determining when a spoken command begins and ends, for identifying the commands without sacrificing time resolution, and for minimizing false triggering on noise. Such a method would enable precise responsive timing, hands-free and under the user's control, in applications ranging from electronics to research to manufacturing technologies.